CNN
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The query for prosecutors reexamining the homicide convictions of Lyle and Erik Menendez isn't whether or not they killed their mother and father, however how culpable they are surely.
“There’s no question that they committed the killing,” Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón informed CNN’s Jim Acosta on Saturday. “The question is, to what degree of culpability should they be held accountable to, given the totality of the circumstances?”
The reexamination of the case comes greater than 35 years after the deadly taking pictures of Jose and Kitty Menendez of their Beverly Hills dwelling, resulting in a high-profile prosecution of their sons Lyle and Erik, then 21 and 18 years outdated. The brothers had been in the end convicted of the murders and have admitted to the deed, however they've argued they did so in self-defense after enduring years of their father’s abuse.
The case has taken on new curiosity in the wake of a docuseries and Netflix drama in addition to a rising understanding of and empathy for sexual abuse victims. Prosecutors have mentioned they're reconsidering the brothers’ jail sentence of life with out parole.
Here’s a take a look at the timeline of the case over the a long time, from the preliminary taking pictures to the current efforts to change their sentence.
The killings and trials
August 1989: Jose Menendez, an govt at RCA Records, and his spouse Kitty Menendez, are shot and killed by shotgun blasts of their Beverly Hills mansion. Lyle called 911 and mentioned, “Someone killed my parents.”
March 1990: Lyle is arrested by police and Erik turns himself in days later after they confessed to their therapist. They are accused of first-degree homicide.
July 1993: The Menendez brothers go on trial in a Los Angeles courtroom, every with a separate jury, in a trial televised on Court TV. Prosecutors argued that they killed their mother and father for monetary achieve. The brothers’ defenses admitted they killed their mother and father however argued that they acted out of self-defense after years of emotional, psychological and sexual abuse by their father.
January 1994: Both juries impasse and can't come to a verdict.
October 1995: A retrial of the brothers begins, with one jury. This time round, a lot of the protection proof about sexual abuse is excluded, in keeping with protection attorneys.
March 1996: The jury convicts each brothers of first-degree homicide.
July 1996: The brothers are sentenced to life in jail with out the chance of parole.
Prosecutors assessment new proof in Menendez homicide case
May 2023: In the Peacock docuseries “Menendez + Menudo: Boys Betrayed,” a former member of the boy band Menudo mentioned in a sworn affidavit that he was raped by Jose Menendez when he was about 14.
Attorneys for the Menendez brothers file a habeas petition asking the court docket to rethink the conviction and sentence in mild of recent proof from the Menudo band member and from a letter Erik wrote about the abuse previous to the killings. The attorneys ask the court docket to both vacate the brothers’ conviction and sentence, or allow discovery and an evidentiary listening to by which they'll present proof, the doc says.
The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s workplace says it's reviewing the petition.
September 2024: Netflix releases the crime drama “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story,” a nine-episode sequence co-created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan about the killings.
“(The show) is really more interested in talking about how monsters are made as opposed to born,” Murphy says throughout a panel at an early screening of the present’s first episode, according to Netflix. “We try to not have too much judgment about that because we’re trying to understand why they did something, as opposed to the act of doing something.”
In an announcement shared on social media by his spouse, Erik Menendez criticizes the present’s “horrible and blatant lies” and says the present takes the reality again to “an era when the prosecution built a narrative on a belief system that males were not sexually abused, and that males experienced rape trauma differently than women,” he writes.
“Those awful lies have been disrupted and exposed by countless brave victims over the last two decades who have broken through their personal shame and bravely spoken out. So now Murphy shapes his horrible narrative through vile and appalling character portrayals of Lyle and of me and disheartening slander,” he writes.
October 5, 2024: Gascón, the LA County District Attorney, tells CNN’s Jim Acosta that he “increasingly became concerned that it was critical that we reviewed the new evidence” put forth by the protection.
He famous that occasions had modified concerning how the public and the courts deal with victims of sexual abuse.
“There is no question that our sensitivity to sexual assault is much more significant today,” he mentioned. “(It) has been clearly established that both men and women can be sexually assaulted, or boys and girls. I think 35 years ago cultural norms were a little different. … There is no question that a jury today would look at this case probably very differently than a jury did 35 years ago.”
He additionally notes that the exhibits and movies about the case have had an impression.
“But for the documentary, quite frankly, we probably would not be talking at this point,” he mentioned. “We may be talking later, but that certainly has increased the attention by the public, and that’s why we’re being public about where we are.”
A listening to on the Menendez brothers’ petition is about for November 29.
